Afterthought
by Alva Starr
Summary: Stabbing Merle over and over hadn't brought Daryl relief. The destruction he'd wrought on his brother's skull didn't dispel his rage. He felt that he'd only shut down and hardened. His anger at the world opened a new door to darkness and released a loneliness that told him he'd just grown up. No one would call him little brother again. He used to long for that day.


_**This story is my contribution to the writing challenge A Brother's Grief: It's to be a character study of Daryl and his state of mind as he deals with the death of Merle. You can find the other stories in the challenge here:**_

_**community/A-Brothers-Grief-Writing-Challenge/115331/**_

_**It begins just after Daryl has killed Walker Merle. I include a flashback of the Dixons mother which is a bit AU ish. I use her character that I created for my TWD story Note to Self. Without further ado, I present to you, grieving Daryl, Alva Starr style. Thanks for taking the time to give this a read.**_

_**xx**_

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_"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."-Chuck Palahniuk_

"I can't count the times I tried to love you, man. You were always too hard and too mean to love…" Daryl choked as he fell back on his elbows, face finally relaxing from its twisted grimace of pain. For once he didn't shamefully swipe tears away. Merle certainly wouldn't call him a pussy now. The judge no longer loomed. Merle lay crumpled; a corpse disfigured by Walker features that Daryl killed once and for all. He'd destroyed more than the physical entity of his brother. The realization that he'd killed the shadow figure of what Merle had meant to him wrenched Daryl's gut up into his throat.

Daryl's wrist hurt, his chest ached and his head throbbed. Stabbing Merle over and over hadn't brought relief. The anger and destruction he'd wrought on his brother's skull with the very buck knife Merle had given him when he was fifteen didn't dispel his rage. He felt that he'd only shut down and hardened. His anger at the world opened a new door to darkness and released a loneliness that told him he'd just grown up. No one would call him 'little brother" again. He used to long for that day. Now it didn't feel like such a victory. His mind wandered and forced him to remember. Goddamn, he hated remembering shit.

_"Why Merle? Why were you never there? What did I do? Wasn't I a good enough brother? Didn't I fucking do what you said? " Daryl realized he was shouting at the corpse._

_It's all afterthought. Found a few more holes in the wall. His dad's aim always sucked._

_Every thought is an afterthought. Every act is an acting. Every sound is a shot heard around the world. Daryl could still hear the TV set and the sound of another cigarette being lit as if it were yesterday not over twenty years ago._

_Turn up the white noise._

_I'm an afterthought._

_He was always an afterthought. Daryl accepted that. Sometimes it was just easier that way. After his momma died anyway._

_"It's been a rough summer hasn't it, Daryl?" Charlotte Dixon asked running her bony hand through her eight-year-old son's dark blonde hair. They were sitting on the porch as a breeze blew up from the West and cooled things off a bit. They drank cold Seven Up, Charlotte's without Seagrams in it for a change. Stars slowly crossed the sky above them. As she continued to stroke his hair, she thought about what a sweet gentle boy he was. She hoped Merle would realize that when she was gone. Her oldest boy was different, harder to reach difficult to talk to but she'd make him promise, promise to watch out for Daryl._

_"Where's that brother of yours?"_

_Daryl shook his head but not hard enough to lose the feel of her fingers running through his scalp. He didn't want to look at her face a mass of bruises that should have been his. "Well, you make sure he looks out for you. He's the only one who will."_

_"What about you momma?"_

_She smiled sadly and nodded. "Besides me…darling besides me."_

_"Are you going somewhere momma?"_

Daryl forced himself to stand. It was unsafe to stay here in the open field. He had doubts about returning to the prison but wasn't he the one who'd told Merle he couldn't do things without people anymore? He shouldered his crossbow and absently fingered his knife in its holster.

The heat was rising from the asphalt in waves, radiating up like a shimmering cloud. It was so hot that it could cause an optical illusion if you stared at it too long. Daryl knew this, so at random he would take his eyes off of the road in front of him. After all, it was Georgia in the middle of August. A summer thunderstorm had blown through the day before and the humidity was hovering just above tolerable. The air felt like a damp veil of gauze. He began the walk back alone, leaving his brother behind.

He'd always been a loner. Most people seemed to sense it right away. After Daryl returned to the prison without Merle folks gave him an extra wide berth. The rumor was that he'd indeed found Merle, but he'd turned and Daryl had to kill him again. His own brother.

Working on the fences with Glenn and Tyreese only gave Daryl more time to think and observe. Since the day he'd killed Merle, he'd been trapped in his mind.

In the aftermath of the Walker shit, Daryl saw many good people live with a daily struggle. Sometimes he saw the shock and loss on their faces, other times it showed in their behavior. He was never surprised to see how fast people could go from the top to the bottom. Many good people rose above the ordeal and dealt with it by helping their neighbors. Sadly he saw many more deal with it by being greedy, materialistic, rude, aggressive and dishonest. Human nature is a fascinating thing. It takes very little to strip people down to their bare elements. No matter how smart people are, instincts ring true when danger threatens. People react differently when they struggle with extreme misfortune. You have this moment what are you gonna do? How are you gonna act? Merle had stepped up, in his way. But, too late, so although Daryl felt he was handling the world as it was as well as he could, he began to think about his own mortality. Something he'd never done before. He knew some folks say they don't worry about dying. When it's their time to go, there's nothing that they can do. Yet, everyone thinks about it. Everyone wonders if there is something else after you die.

Hadn't he been taught that suicide was the only unforgivable sin? He wasn't sure if that was true or not. Well, it's the cowards way out he knew that much. Still these past few days the thought of suicide had been on his mind every other second. He kept selling the idea to himself that taking his life was a final solution. Boom. No pain, no loss. He won't feel a thing. No burning in hell and he damned sure won't be hanging out on a cloud playing a harp. He wanted to believe that death was just an eternity of pitch black nothingness. No self-awareness, no thoughts to run through his head ceaselessly. If he didn't have such a manic mind, he wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

The despair set in as soon as Merle was gone. Daryl felt he was watching everyone he knew die while he waited for his turn. "I'm sick of losing people." There, he'd said it.

"Huh?"

"Nuthin'" Daryl mumbled in response to Glenn. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned back to the fence. He knew people were concerned about him. It had been almost a week, but Daryl felt like he'd lost Merle yesterday.

Before the Walker shit, no one he knew thought about death and dying. Now death was a constant. Jim, Sophia, Dale, Lori, T-Dog; even that loser Axel. With the passing of yet another friend, acquaintance, stranger or …relative Daryl realized that he'd already lived more of his life than he had left. Death made him reflect on his life and those things that he'd never done or had yet to do

Daryl hated that he indulged the violence his emotions inflicted on him. The world seemed darker. He kept his eyes sometimes closed just because was easier to live in his own head. He spoke even less than before, keeping the group members at double arms length. Goddamn, Herschel kept trying to head shrink him. He was awful sorry about Merle but was worried about Daryl. He and Rick wanted to talk to Daryl. "Remember son," he'd said "Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It's a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you're hurt."

_Fuck him! Hell did he know? Coward?_ "I ain't afraid of nothin'" Daryl had grunted before turning away and heading to his cell. Aside from performing his necessary duties around the prison Daryl kept to himself, laying on his bunk most of the time struggling with ambiguous feeling. Behind his closed eyes raged entire storms; flashes of memories, deluges of thoughts, hurricanes of emotions howled at him.

_"You're nothing but a freak to them; redneck trash is all you are. They're laughing at you behind their backs. It's just you and me. Like its 'sposed to be."_

_Merle walked up to Daryl, leaning his face in close. "They ain't your kin; not your blood."_

_Daryl tried to turn away, but Merle grabbed his shoulder. "Now you listen here, ain't nobody gonna care about you 'except me, little brother, ain't nobody ever will."_

_"You was never there!"_

_"I'm on your side."_

_"Yeah? Since when?"_

_"Hell, since the day you were born, baby brother, someone had to look after your worthless ass."_

_"You never took care of me. You talk a big game, but you were never there. Hell, you ain't here now. Guess some things never change."_

But Merle had come back. They'd found each other again.

Where is my second chance? To get to know him, to ask all those questions, I never got ask. The goddamn timing was never right for us.

Regret. It felt real. It felt solid. Daryl lay on his bunk as the storms continued to flicker and rage making him wish for his last thought and feeling. The storms were too strong for sleep so he gazed up at the gray peeling plaster. The silver moonlight that pierced the dark and shadowed the steel bars dulled. He felt disoriented, unsure of where he was for a minute. He swore he heard whispers but when he turned his head there was nothing there. He heard long-lost whispers of memories and little regrets, the television, lighting a cigarette, but so faded that there's nothing to hold onto. Faded to afterthoughts

Daryl looked down at his clenched fists. He clawed the bed just to feel something solid. The light outside was red and a memory took over and suddenly he was somewhere else. In his memory, he is in a green field. The sky is an orange-red. The red is almost the shade of rich blood because of the smog in the distance and the dark streaks of cloud high above. The colors are like layers of warm. Layers of rich blood and fire and the in-betweens.

Merle is in the green fields with him.

He turned his head to the side and before he knew it, he'd plunged into darkness again but a figure stretched her hand out toward him. He wondered if this was the comfort he'd rejected in life. He wondered if he'd only find it in his dreams. He didn't know who this figure was, but her hand looked familiar so he took it into his own. It was warm and soft. She held his hand firmly and it felt like he was being infused with a bit of life.

He woke when the figure squeezed his hand.

The cell felt darker now. The cool white glow of the moon was still the only source of light. Daryl felt a hand on his shoulder that made his entire body hurt. Merle never taught him what it meant to be tolerant and what it meant to love and what it meant to take responsibility and accept that your actions have consequences. But Merle taught him to say no, the most powerful gift anyone could give someone. He taught him to fight. He made him into a survivor.

With each second that passed, time stretched and Daryl struggled to remain present by focusing on his breath and his heart beat.

He closed his eyes for dark. Merle was there. He had that shit-eating grin plastered on his face. Momma was there too, her hand was so soft. Her hand had held his all this time. They were standing in green fields and the sky was blood and warmth and Charlotte's hand was warm. Daryl heard her voice. "I'm proud of you…. Daryl you are not Merle. You are your own man and now is your time. It's okay to let go son. You are free."

"You did right." Merle added, then chuckled, "Little brother."

Daryl opened his eyes as the last of the vision slipped away.

I don't want to die. Ultimately Daryl didn't want to go to that unknown abyss. Was this time, right now, the best of what he could expect? Walkers and all? So many people believe that Hell is right here on Earth while Peggy Lee sings in the background, "Is That All There Is?" Not being much of a gambler, Daryl would rather take his chances with the life he had left to live and not dwell on the unknown of death, which would probably come sooner than later. He'd take out as many of those dead sons of bitches as he could on the way. No, he wasn't gonna eat his own bullet. Sticking his head in the sand didn't make death go away. Soon it would come for him, but he'd go out fighting. Merle had made sure of that.


End file.
